Category Archives: China

Beijing GNU/Linux User Group

I was having a strange feeling that I was suddenly swapped out from China to an English-speaking world. I seldom have this kind of feeling before since I’ve been living in Beijing for 2.5 years.

Tonight I represented my company, Sun Wah Linux, to talk about Linux in China in Beijing GNU/Linux User Group (BLUG) meeting. Frankly I was having a hard time feeding myself with how Linux is doing in China because my work does not focus on Linux specifically. Anyway, I tried my best to learn about the trends and issues as much as I could before I attended the meeting. Since I went to the meeting place (a restaurant called Steak and Eggs) from China World Hotel after the first day of JavaChina Conference and the two places are very close to each other, I arrived there at 6:30pm while the meeting was scheduled to start at 7pm. The meeting did not start at 7pm exactly because basically we all wanted to fill our stomach first :) The president of BLUG, Mike, who is a foreigner, so are most of the other members/attendants, they all came from different parts of the world. The moment we ate at Steak and Eggs reminded me of the moments when I was staying in hostels with foreigners as a backpacker in Europe. This kind of sudden cultural change is mind-boggling. I’ve met a lot of cool guys in this meeting. I have not imagined that there are so many Linux guru expats who are living and working in Beijing. It’s really a very good experience.

Thanks Mike for the BLUG T-shirt, it’s nice and I will wear it tomorrow during the 2nd day of JavaChina conference. :)

北京開了 UNIQLO

某日在王府井看到有行人拿着 UNIQLO 的袋子,猜想是不是 UNIQLO 已經涉足北京了。以前到上海的时候曾經到過那裏的 UNIQLO,東西還是可以的,加上朋友都說 UNIQLO 又便宜質量又好,於是上網找找 UNIQLO 在北京的地點。終於被我找到了,一家在王府井新東安市場的3樓,另一家在西單商場北樓4樓。昨晚吃完飯之后,懷着興奮不已的心情和同事從嘉里中心跑到王府井,打算到 UNIQLO 朝聖之餘,也勢必瘋狂掃貨一番。怎料北京店的東西怎也引不起我“買物”的興趣,可能又是日本人把最好的都留在自己國家的緣故,好東西都不出口的,又可能是剛到換季的時候,賣的衣服主要都是秋天的服裝,都不是我想買的,所以選擇就更少了。最後什麼都沒買就走了。雖然如此,還是有不少可推荐的:襯衫,有幾款顏色蠻特別、內衣,拿上手已經感覺很舒服、襪有很多款式、牛仔褲,百多元價錢實惠。還是到冬天的時候,再來找一些配搭用的就最經濟了。

中國官方網站:http://www.uniqlo.com.cn

注意:北京的 UNIQLO 已經全面撤出,殘念。

Back from Nanjing

After staying in Nanjing for a month to complete a short-term project that uses XML-RPC, I finally understand and agree to my colleagues that there aren’t many good places to eat in Nanjing. I had been going to Nanjing from time to time, but every time it’s just for a few days, this is the first time I stayed in Nanjing for so long. It’s not because we didn’t try hard enough to look for good restaurants, but it’s because the standard of “taste good” in Nanjing is apparently lower than that in Beijing. Luckily during my stay there is a new Hong Kong-style restaurant (茶餐廳) opened near to our office at Zhujiang Road, and turned out that we went there for 80% of our lunches and dinners.

Several other discoveries in my stay:
1. You can go to nearly anywhere by taxi for RMB 7 (the initial charge) if you live in the city center, as you seldom need to go over 3 km, unless you go to the Time Warner cinema for the best theatre experience in Nanjing.
2. This restaurant, claiming that it’s recommended in Lonely Planet with the praise “The best pizza south of the Yangzi”, has closed… I wonder how good it is…
3. The Italian restaurant “Bella Napoli” at No. 75 Zhongshan East Road serves really nice Italian food. Their pizza tastes just as good as the ones I had when I was travelling in Napoli. Anchovies, cheese, tomato and olives, yummy.
4. “1912” is where you’d like to hang out in the weekend. A8, Scarlet and BB King are good.

Tor, another way to get around the Great Firewall of China

Living in China is a pain in the a** since many internet sites have been blocked by the 5th greatest invention by Chinese, namely the Great Firewall of China. Having been using SSH tunnelling to establish a private channel to my own server hosted somewhere else, browsing websites becomes possible again. But this method doesn’t help those who don’t have the technical know-how to set it up or are not as fortunate as us to own a server overseas, Tor comes to rescue. On my Debian system, it requires near-zero effort to install and configure. I just apt-get (or aptitude) install tor privoxy, adds forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 . (don’t forget the dot at the end of the line) to /etc/privoxy/config, and then restart privoxy by /etc/init.d/privoxy restart. Then I set the HTTP and HTTPS proxy of my Firefox to 127.0.0.1 and port 8118, and poof! I can now go to any websites that have been filtered, such as www.mingpaonews.com, www.appledaily.com and even the Google cache!

Actually using Tor alone without Privoxy can already let you visit most of the blocked sites. But due to the “DNS hijack” done by the authority, you will get incorrect IP addresses for some sites, such as www.rthk.org.hk and www.881903.com, the two radio stations in Hong Kong. The DNS will return random IP addresses to you when you’re querying for these site’s IP. As a result, you’ll be brought to a website that’s not what you want. Privoxy resolves this problem since your web browser is now passing the hostname to Tor instead of the incorrect IP resolved by the “viral DNS”.

We will wait and see when the government start to implement technologies to prevent people from using Tor, like blocking the directory servers or filtering traffic that looks like the Tor protocol in the Great Firewall. But until then, I hope Tor can help those who are still under the fascist rule of their government but are eager to explore the outside world.